Hearty Mart: Democratizing Corporate Entrepreneurship

Nadeem Jafri (Jafri), the founder of Hearty Mart Enterprise Private Limited (HMEPL), was based in Juhapura, Ahmedabad India. HMEPL catered to Hotel, Restaurant, and Café (HoReCa) segment. In 2017, Jafri started practicing corporate entrepreneurship at HMEPL with a dedicated team and later democratized the same for all employees of HMEPL. In the last quarter of 2022, HMEPL acquired four businesses and exercised organization restructuring which led to seven business entities with diverse backgrounds, were based in remote locations and had resource constraints when compared with HMEPL. Jafri wondered about a mechanism to successfully implement the innovation and entrepreneurship culture in the newly restructured entity HMEPL and across other seven businesses. The case provides an opportunity for students to step into the shoes of Jafri and plan a way to implement entrepreneurial and innovation culture in the newly restructured HMEPL and across other seven businesses. In doing so, students should take into consideration the data regarding the existing processes and teams at HMEPL that helped it to innovate, and make assumptions to analyze the feasibility of implementing entrepreneurial and innovation culture in newly restructured HMEPL and across seven other businesses.Nadeem Jafri (Jafri), the founder of Hearty Mart Enterprise Private Limited (HMEPL), was sitting in his Juhapura office in Ahmedabad on 18th July 2023 and reflecting on the integration of new business ventures within HMEPL. Jafri started HMEPL in Ahmedabad, India, and catered to Hotel, Restaurant, and Café (HoReCa) segment. In 2017, Jafri started practicing corporate entrepreneurship in HMEPL with the leadership team and later democratized the same for all the employees of HMEPL. In the last quarter of 2022, HMEPL acquired four businesses and post the acquisition, went through organizational restructuring leading to seven business units operating under HMEPL. Jafri was wondering about the mechanism to implement the innovation and corporate entrepreneurship culture in the newly restructured HMEPL and across the seven business units which had diverse businesses. Many questions remained unanswered during the early phase of implementing innovation and entrepreneurship culture in the newly restructured HMEPL and across the seven business units. He grappled with questions like, ‘do we need to implement corporate entrepreneurship in all the businesses or do a pilot in one of the business units,’ ‘are all the business units ready as each one of them is based in a remote location and is also facing resource constraints,’ and ‘will the employees agree?’ Despite such skepticism, Jafri had to share the way forward about the idea of implementing the innovation and corporate entrepreneurship culture in the next leadership meeting on the coming weekend. The business of HMEPL had gained momentum and had crossed pre-COVID levels by early June 2023. Jafri had to ensure that he made the right choices which ensured continued growth for HMEPL.